Color Photography

Taken at Hofstra University, getting pumped up for last night’s debate. The turquoise facepaint, the green grass, black faces, blue robes in the distance; black uniforms with red highlights; the 2nd photographer in the foreground calling attention to the composition of the whole thing… I was amazed when the accompanying article wasn’t about race, or… photography, or… America. It was about how the campus was excited for the debate.

Can anyone recommend any worthwhile essays on race and color photography? There must be a Sontag or a Sante essay floating around somewhere. Or is this just a minor riff on “color” I’m forcing?

A couple things associatively, aleatorically spring to mind. I will share them with you now.

African Americans in William Eggleston’s photos, the South in the 60s… the photographic idea of “contrast”: plus a racial contrast?? I need some help here. I need to go back to college.

I remember reading somewhere, someone reviewing Boogie Nights when it came out (I want to say Glenn Kenny in Premiere, I can’t remembe. I also can’t find, for the life of me, a still from the scene he mentioned–) the scene where Don Cheadle is wearing a white suit in a donut shop and someone (?) gets shot. Blood splatters all over white-suited Cheadle as he’s holding a box of donuts. The critic in Premiere or wherever says something like “the scene is a literalized riff on the joke what’s black and white and red all over?

This baffled me in high-school when I read it. But stuck with me, too. I really wish I had a still of that scene right now. email me if you “have one,” or anything else. OK, talk to you later,